One of the great benefits of our digital connectivity is the ability to collaborate. People from around the globe work together on myriad initiatives, from funding new businesses to designing better computer code.

Now a member of Congress wants to use that power to shape federal legislation.

Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-San Jose, is working on a new bill that covers situations where the government would seize a Web domain when there is a case of copyright infringement. The intent of the bill would be to require the government to give better notice to website operators, giving them a better chance to defend themselves before government agents take action.

The problem: Sometimes giving notice allows illegal sites to destroy evidence and hurts cases where a copyright infringement suit may be brought.

"So, Internet policy experts and free speech warriors, how, specifically, would you suggest accomplishing these goals?" Lofgren asked this week in a post on the social network Reddit.

San Francisco's Reddit is no stranger to politics. President Obama held a question-and-answer session on the site during the 2012 campaign and, on election day, returned to the site to encourage people to vote.

How Reddit works

When most hear "social network," they think of a Facebook or Twitter feed. But Reddit works a bit differently. The site operates as a system of discussion forums - called "subreddits" - with topics ranging from politics to computer coding to sexual fetishes.

Comments and ideas are rated by other users and the good ones are "upvoted" to the top of the page. The bad ones are sent to the bottom or, sometimes, hidden. In essence, Reddit's format allows the user base or "crowd" - rather than an editor or site manager - to shape the entirety of the discussion.

Crowdsourcing - outsourcing a task to a large group of people - is one of the Internet's favorite buzzwords and perhaps rightfully so. Online encyclopedia Wikipedia is now the sixth most visited website in the world, beating such Web giants as Twitter and Amazon, according to statistics from Alexa, a Web analytics firm.

But crowdsourcing is not just shaping knowledge - but commerce as well.

Raising funds

The website Kickstarter gives life to countless artistic projects and new businesses by allowing anyone to financially back an idea. Entrepreneurs or artists set a fundraising goal and make a pitch to the crowd with slide decks, photos and videos.

If they raise the needed cash in a given time period, they get the money; if not, the cash is returned to those that pledged. Those who pledge money do not actually take ownership of the business, like an investor would, but receive gifts or perks as determined by the business owner.

Though most projects ask for modest amounts in comparison, in May, Pebble Technology raised over $10 million from 68,900 people to fund a new computerized watch, the largest project the site has seen to date.

The website GitHub has capitalized on the force of the masses to improve computing code. Rather than having the code worked on behind closed doors - as in the case of Apple's operating system - the site allows engineers to submit changes to coding projects, called Gits - a coding tool designed by Linux founder Linus Torvalds. Users "check" the code in and out - sort of like a library book - to make the necessary changes. In most cases, users who collaborate on projects never meet in person or are continents apart.

Quick reaction

Redditors - the affectionate name for those who use Reddit - operate similarly, with some users gaining fame across the site as provocative discussion leaders or intelligent (or obscene) commenters. Lofgren - who was active on Reddit during the debate over last year's contentious and now-dead Stop Online Piracy Act - posted around noon Monday and as of noon Tuesday, Redditors had submitted over 70 comments.

Most Redditors participate in the site under user names that don't actually reflect their offline name.

"People are meant to be innocent until proven guilty," read the top-rated comment from user Tipaa. "Taking a website down or seizing a domain name should be a last resort opposed to a standardized knee-jerk reaction: taking a website down can be equivalent to shutting down a whole business franchise."

Many Redditors felt that the root of the issue was the 2008 Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property Act (PRO IP Act), which raised the penalty for copyright, trademark and patent infringement and expanded the reach of the Justice Department.

"I urge you to not write a law that gives domain name seizures due process but to write a law that makes them completely illegal for all purposes, (possibly amend or repeal the PRO IP ACT)," wrote user computersurveyer. "If you were to make a law that gives (domain owners) some due process in the eyes of the government this would make domain name seizures more legitimate."

Lofgren responds

To her credit, Lofgren returned to Reddit later and empathized with some of the viewpoints, especially those against the expansion of government power under the PRO IP Act.

"I voted against the Pro Ip Act but the vote was 410 yes to 11 no in the House," she wrote. "I do not believe it is likely the act will be repealed any time soon."

However, she noted that she's writing up a copyright reform bill, separate from the domain name seizure bill.

When she finishes, she offered to post her revisions to Reddit for comments.